


Fight Me

by emmram



Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: M/M, Porthagnan, modern!AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-25
Updated: 2015-07-25
Packaged: 2018-04-11 04:05:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,138
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4420655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmram/pseuds/emmram
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern!AU wherein d'Artagnan is a particularly difficult patient and Porthos is his all-too-patient, not at all attractive (nopenopenope) nurse that he keeps inviting to fight.</p><p>Based off this <a href="http://why-this-kolaveri-machi.tumblr.com/post/121834425889/hippity-hoppity-brigade-ohsebs-ohsebs">wonderful tumblr post</a>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fight Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [RobinLorin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RobinLorin/gifts).



> Warnings: Very mild cursing. Ethically sliiiiightly iffy. Set in Generic Western Country. Tried to stay true to the spirit of the prompt as much as possible.
> 
> Just a tiny bit of Porthagnan fluff.

**Fight Me**

d’Artagnan doesn’t care much for hospitals.

Of course, to say that anybody looks forward to a hospital stay, either as a patient or as someone working there, would be palpably false, or an indication of a completely different kind of disease. It is a leveller of egos, a candlesnuffer to the human spirit, much like the process of democracy, or trooping to your traditional Christmas visit to your mother’s—stripped down to what you were born with and awaiting judgment on everything else.

d’Artagnan tries not to think about it too much, but it’s difficult: he’s heard the stories, hasn’t he, of how he was born two months premature and spent most of his infancy and early childhood a scrawny, undernourished-looking runt, in and out of the hospital with some fever or the other. _Always thought we were going to lose you to one of them_ , his father would say, and for some time it was even a matter of pride—in that weird, this-happened-to-me sort of way that schoolboys love to talk about—until it was his mother’s turn to go to the hospital and never come back home. He hates the thought of it—the smell of spirit, the drab, plain walls, the suffocating sense of having everybody around you waiting on something or the other for what seems like an eternity, just—all of it.

Perhaps that is why he ignores the tickle in his throat until it becomes a cough, the cough until it settles down in his chest and crackles in his lungs, that until his fever climbs enough to make him dizzy, and  _that_  until he collapses during work one day, coughing, struggling to breathe. He doesn’t remember much after that, but is told much later that an ambulance was called, several patrons of his father’s restaurant kicked up a furore that one of their servers, while possibly dying, could’ve infected their food, punches were thrown, and that his father travelled with him in the back of the ambulance, nursing a black eye and cracked knuckles. d’Artagnan is still not sure which part of the story frightens him more.

Predictably, as soon as he’s able to stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time and his chest starts feeling less like his lungs have been replaced with stone, d’Artagnan wants nothing more than to get out of that drab room. The restlessness settles in his bones, vibrates in his fingers and toes. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have the energy to do much more than glare stonily at the doctor who smiles infuriatingly at d’Artagnan’s every non-answer, or at the nurse who comes to check his vitals every six hours and take vials of his blood for testing. The nurse, at least, doesn’t pretend that d’Artagnan doesn’t exist beyond his congested lungs, although his reaction is mostly to smile with that sort of ingratiating pleasantness that d’Artagnan supposes he has been trained in.

One morning, as he’s hacking and spitting yellow-white phlegm into the tray that the nurse is holding out for him, he croaks, “…your name?”

“Porthos,” the nurse says briskly. “Now spit, come on.”

“P’tho—” d’Artagnan manages before he’s coughing again; it’s a particularly long jag this time, at the end of which he wraps an arm around his chest and lets out a thin moan from the sheer misery. He can feel Porthos’ hand on his back, warm and sure, supporting him.

“Porthos,” the nurse repeats. “I’m not sure what you did just now was to spit or try to repeat my name—or both,” he says, but he’s grinning and his eyes sparkle with good humour.

“Both,” d’Artagnan says fuzzily. “I mean—no. I, uh. … What did you say?”

“Go to sleep,” Porthos says, settling him back on the pillows. d’Artagnan does so, too exhausted for disobedience.

The next day, Porthos shows up with short, all-too-familiar needle in his hand and announces he’s going to take d’Artagnan’s blood for that morning’s ABG. Porthos bends over his arm, and d’Artagnan desperately tries to distract himself from the sharp pain of the needle piercing his skin, and the throbbing that will stay with him for hours. The empty piercings on both of Porthos’ ears catches his eyes, and he imagines little gold rings hanging from them; wonders how they would go with Porthos’ thick dark hair and neatly trimmed beard. The part of his imagination that’s stuck at age five swiftly adds an eyepatch and a colourful bandanna wrapped around Porthos’ head; he bites his lip to keep from smiling.

Porthos finally straightens and starts putting his equipment away. d’Artagnan shifts against the pillows, croaks, “Fight me.”

“What?”

d’Artagnan shifts some more and tugs on one of the pillows under his head, trying to use it as a shield. “Fight me,” he repeats.

Porthos smiles, says, “maybe later,” and rearranges the pillows.

Over the next few days it becomes a sort of routine between them: often it’s the only thing d’Artagnan looks forward to at all. Porthos would come in to check on him, and d’Artagnan would croak, pathetically, “Fight me, come on.”

Porthos would smile indulgently, say, “I know you’ll win, so no.”

Two days before he’s discharged, a new nurse comes into his room; he learns that Porthos has been shifted to another ward as part of his rotation. He’s not sure how to ask if he can see him again; isn’t even sure _if_  he should ask anybody about it. The thought preoccupies him even through the day that he finally gets out of there; he has a vague sense of coming out of some kind of warm cave, like a beast’s foetid mouth, into the crisp sunshine, but he can’t help but feel as though he has left something behind. His father gives him a stern lecture on being a responsible adult and  _for god’s sake charles stop sulking and just listen_ , and d’Artagnan does finally force himself to listen; he remembers all too well the story of his father knocking out a grown man with one punch (although he does suspect it’s largely fabricated).

Nearly a month later, he’s at the local coffeehouse at the end of a long shift, cooling his heels and breathing through the occasional twinges he still feels in his chest from time to time. When he opens his eyes the guy from the counter has placed a large cup of coffee in front of him.

d’Artagnan squints. “I didn’t order that.”

He merely shrugs, nods his head at a different table, and leaves.

d’Artagnan lifts the cup. On it is written,  _Fight Me_ , with a mobile number scrawled underneath. He looks up to see Porthos grinning at him from the opposite table. The gold rings in his ears glint in the electric light.

d’Artagnan grins back.

**_Finis_ **


End file.
